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Facing seemingly endless paralysis on health care reform from the federal government, a growing number of states are starting to consider reforms that they could enact to improve the provision of health care for their residents. Although federal laws and rules dominate health care regulations, there are still several worthy reforms that states could pursue that would have the effect of lowering costs and expanding choices for patients.

Michigan is one of five states where 17-year-olds are prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system, rather than the juvenile justice system. Following a trend in several other states, some Michigan stakeholders have begun a “raise the age” campaign to adjust the age of adult criminal liability to 18, the age of majority for all other purposes. The Legislature introduced bills to that effect last year, but opponents of the campaign warn that shifting 17-year-olds into the juvenile system will be an expensive burden on resource-strapped counties. Reformers counter that the move will ensure better outcomes for teens in the long run. Join us to hear expert panelists discuss the costs and benefits of raising the age.

The past year’s rise of Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education has brought more attention to the performance of charter schools, both nationally and in her native Michigan. Charter schools are tuition-free, state-funded schools of choice that tend to operate with fewer dollars than other public schools. How well are charter schools doing with the resources they have?

Working a job — any job — is connected to lower poverty, better income mobility, lower crime rates, fewer children born out-of-wedlock and a host of other positive results. But today, the right to earn a living is becoming more difficult. In 1950, only around 5 percent of workers needed an occupational license – today, more than one out of every five workers in Michigan is required to have this special government permission to work. This typically includes mandated educational degrees, hours of training, upfront fees, testing, continuing education, and limits of people with criminal records.

The Innocence Project is a well-known nonprofit organization whose goal is to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. Forty-six percent of its cases involved misapplied forensic science — meaning that a method, technique or analysis was conducted incorrectly. There have been 17 exonerations in Michigan involving misapplied forensic science. Now, in partnership with the Reason Foundation, the Innocence Project is calling for improvements to forensic science and for better transparency and quality control in crime labs. Panelists from the Innocence Project and Reason will discuss how the application of forensic science to criminal prosecutions can be improved by policy change and public education.

As you read this, a future that features driverless cars on city streets, interstate highways and maybe in your driveway is steadily unfolding. But before this future fully arrives, policymakers need to think hard about how to properly regulate these new technologies. Regulations, after all, are powerful and often blunt tools — they can be used to foster innovation, competition and economic growth, and they can be used to prevent change, snuff out invention and slow technological advances. The predicted benefits of autonomous vehicles to society are large and widespread, and Michigan needs to be ensure that its residents can take full advantage of these upsides.

An increasing number of Michigan families are exercising choice within the public education system. More than 300,000 students attend either a charter school or another public school across district lines, most often through Schools of Choice. While there has been much debate about how school choice is working in Michigan, the voices of parents seeking educational alternatives have largely not been included in the discussion.

The Republican Party fully controls most states and at the national level has captured the House, Senate and presidency. By many measures, the party has more power than it has had in many decades. But will that control last? And, more importantly, what policy priorities are coming about from these political victories?

Renting out the family summer cottage is a common practice in Michigan, but with today’s technologies, it’s easier than ever, empowered by companies like AirBnB, HomeAway, VRBO and more. These short-term rentals mean vacationers can find a place much more easily and inexpensively, while owners can earn some extra money. It seems like a win-win.

Some institutions of higher education have cracked down on free speech. Even in Michigan, universities have speech codes that restrict students’ speech, campus groups have prevented speakers from delivering talks and administrators have stopped individuals from handing outcertain literature.

You may not have seen them on the highway yet, but autonomous vehicles are here. The potential benefits of this and related technologies are immense. But they also present new and unique regulatory and infrastructure challenges for state and local governments. Brent Skorup of the Mercatus Center has written extensively on these issues and will lay out the principles and practices policymakers should pursue when determining how to regulate these new technologies.

There aren’t many policies that get near unanimous support from economists, but free trade is one of them. Despite this, a central theme of the 2016 presidential campaign, heard from both political parties, was that free trade was somehow harmful to the United States and corrective action was needed. Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan-Flint and scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, will make the case for why President Trump’s assessment of free trade is misguided.

Obamacare repeal-and-replace is underway, and regardless of whether it passes or fails big, changes are coming for Michigan’s medical services and insurance industry, and the state’s social welfare system, especially Medicaid.

As police departments seek to reduce crime, restore trust in law enforcement and improve the strained relationship between officers and civilians, many have begun shifting to more community-oriented operations.

A “bottlenecker” is someone who uses the power of the government to limit competition in the market and artificially boost their own profits. Bottleneckers use a variety of methods to achieve their goals, including tax loopholes, regulations, occupational licensing requirements, minimum wage laws and many more. The end result when these special interest bottleneckers succeed is fewer choices and higher prices for consumers, fewer job opportunities for workers and less innovation throughout the economy.

Unionized workers are forced to accept union representation whether they want it or not, even though Michigan is a right-to-work state. Right-to-work takes away a union’s ability to get a worker fired for not paying them. However with the law unions are still given a monopoly to represent all workers on a job. They must provide representation even to those not paying them. While unions like their monopoly they still complain about what they call “free riders” – those forced to accept their services but not paying for them. Unions have brought legal challenges in several states claiming right-to-work violates constitutional takings clauses because of this so-called free rider issue.

Retiree benefits are a national crisis, but some cities and states have made significant reforms that are saving money and preventing liabilities being pushed off onto future generations. This event will discuss the scope of the problem and what Michigan should be doing to solve it.

Nonpublic schools serve tens of thousands of Michigan elementary and secondary students, yet a clear understanding of the state's diverse private education landscape has been lacking. While most states (including those on our borders) have enacted some kind of publicly funded choice program, Michigan private schools fight in the Legislature for a small share of funding to cover the state’s health and safety mandates. In order to expand choice, Michigan must overcome a stringent constitution, as well as some popular misconceptions about private schools.

The Affordable Care Act dramatically changed the healthcare market throughout the United States and expanded the control of the federal government over healthcare policies. Despite this fact, there are still reforms that states can make that could expand the access and reduce the cost of medical services. This event will feature several experts who will discuss reforms that Michigan policymakers should consider if they want to improve healthcare services in this state.

Ridesharing is a new service made popular by companies like Lyft and Uber. It relies on smartphones to connect those who need a ride to drivers willing to provide one — a riff on the traditional taxi system. Ridesharing has allowed thousands of Michiganders earn extra income as drivers and save money and time as riders. It currently operates in a legal gray area, because ridesharing drivers are not cabbies or chauffeurs.

Occupational licensing is now the biggest issue in labor economics, with even more of an effect than unions. On a national basis 25 percent of all Americans need the government’s permission and specific credentials before they can work. That is more than twice as many people who are members of unions—11 percent and declining—and 25 times the number who earn the minimum wage.

Under current Michigan law, Tesla Motors and other car companies may not open showrooms or service centers to work directly with consumers. Instead, to operate in Michigan, car companies have to enter into franchise agreements with independent dealers. Telsa and at least one other start-up car company, Elio Motors, have stated that working through dealers would impair their ability to get into the market. A number of other states have recently moved to permit direct distribution by manufacturers. Professor Crane will lay out the case for direct distribution, showing its importance to innovation, competition, and consumer choice.

Public workers in Michigan pay hundreds or thousands of dollars per year in dues to unions, but it’s very difficult for workers to find out how that money is being spent. The reason is that Michigan has weak reporting requirements for government unions, asking for only a few numbers on spending in broad categories. Under this system, union members cannot assess if their union is spending their dues money wisely or not.

Civil asset forfeiture is a legal process by which allows the police to seize and sell private property, even if no crime has been charged against the owner of that property. Several states have recently reformed their civil asset forfeiture laws, and Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, has called for improving federal laws pertaining to this practice.

Many middle-class Michiganders think that most low-performing schools are located in poor inner cities such as Detroit, not in their nice neighborhoods or in their smaller towns. They need to think again.

Michigan’s vast, disorganized criminal law inherently places residents at risk of unintentionally violating a growing array of regulatory crimes that are difficult to discover and understand. The complexity of administrating such a criminal code threatens to divert scarce resources away from the enforcement of serious violent and property crimes. This event will feature ideas about how to protect Michigan residents from overcriminalization and improve the state’s criminal law.

Please join the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in welcoming Daniel DiSalvo, assistant professor of Political Science at The City College of New York-CUNY and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for State and Local Leadership.

Occupational licensing has had a curious and unusual history both in the U.S. and other nations. During some periods it was virtually nonexistent, but now in the U.S., it is growing rapidly and has developed into a stealth form of regulation. Dr. Morris Kleiner, a nationally recognized expert on occupational licensure, will address this issue and provide answers to why some occupations became heavily regulated and others did not. In addition, he’ll outline the economic effects of occupational licensing on mobility, wage determination, prices and the quality of services delivered.

A necessary building block of a prosperous society is economic freedom. History shows that freer countries tend to become wealthier countries, with the United States typically leading the way. But is the United States moving in a different direction?

Dean Stansel, an economics professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, will discuss the current state of economic liberty in the United States. Stansel authors the Fraser Institute’s annual “Economic Freedom of North America” report, and will compare states by this measure. Finally, Stansel will assess how well Michigan supports economic freedom.

James Sherk, senior policy analyst in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation, will present on ways to mitigate the economic harms caused by a higher minimum wage and on ways to hold government unions more accountable to their members.

Our speakers will be Richard Dreyfuss, a senior fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation in Pennsylvania and Stephen D. Eide, senior fellow with the Center for State and Local Leadership at the Manhattan Institute in New York.

How states like Michigan can fix perennial pension problems will be the topic of this Issues and Ideas Forum. The featured speaker will be Dan Liljenquist, who spearheaded pension reforms in Utah while he served as a state senator. For his role in the Utah reforms, Liljenquist was named a 2011 “Public Official of the Year” by Governing Magazine, and has since a become national expert on this issue and highlighted by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, among others outlets.

This Issues and Ideas Forum will present Mackinac Center findings from a review of more than 100 teachers union contracts, which analyzed the various ways school boards have attempted to comply with the 2011 reforms regarding teacher evaluations, placement and tenure. Our featured speaker will be Representative Ken Yonker, R-Caledonia, who will share his thoughts on the intent of the 2011 reforms and how districts have implemented them.

This Issues and Ideas Forum will look at the question from a free-market perspective. Our speakers will be Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and Helen Krieble, founder and president of The Vernon K. Krieble Foundation and creator of the “Red Card Solution,” a plan that could curb illegal immigration by offering non-citizen work permits that do not lead to citizenship.

This Issues and Ideas Forum features Dr. Ted Bolema, a Mackinac Center adjunct scholar and senior policy editor for the Mercatus Center in Washington, D.C. who will make the case for why Michigan needs to give Michigan electricity customers more options.

This Issues and Ideas Forum features Paul Larkin of the Heritage Foundation, Marc Levin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Michael Reitz of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy who will discuss the need to define intent in Michigan criminal statutes.